“MR. CREEDE,” said he, “look carefully at this watch. Do you recognize it?”
“Of course I do,” replied Clive. “It’s mine. How did—?”
“This watch, Mr. Creede,” said the chief, slowly, “has just been turned over to me by your brother.”
“My brother?” asked Clive, surprised.
As he spoke his eyes searched the room, peering into the farther shadows in quest of Osmun.
“He has gone,” said the chief, reading the glance. “But before he went he pulled this watch out of the vest pocket of—Mr. Thaxton Vail. You admit it is yours. The watch that was stolen from your room this evening. Therefore—”
“Clive!” broke in Vail. “You know me well enough to—”
“Mr. Vail,” interrupted the chief, “it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you. Now, then, Mr. Creede: You have identified this watch as the one stolen from you. It was taken from Mr. Vail’s pocket in the presence of all of us. You can swear to the identification?”
“Hold on, please!” said Clive. “You’re barking industriously, Chief. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. That isn’t the watch I lost.”
“You said it was!” accused the chief. “You said—”
“I said nothing of the sort,” denied Clive. “You asked me if I recognized the watch. And I said I did and that it was mine. I didn’t say it was the one that was stolen to-night. And it isn’t.”
The house guests—to whom the Argyle watch was a familiar object—gasped. Thaxton Vail made as though to speak in quick disclaimer. But Clive’s tired voice droned on as he met Quimby’s suspicious eyes fairly and calmly.
“This watch is mine. It belonged to my father. It was one he had made the year before he died, with the Argyle watch as a model. And a very poor bit of work it was. For it has scarcely a look of the original. Last week at my Rackrent Farm house Mr. Vail dropped his repeater-watch and broke its mainspring. He sent it to New York to be mended. And I lent him this second watch of mine to carry till his own comes back. That’s what I meant just now when I said I recognized the watch and that it is mine.”
“Clive!” sputtered Vail. “You’re—”
“If my brother snatched this watch out of Mr. Vail’s pocket,” finished Clive, heedless of the interruption and with his eyes still holding the chief’s, “then he did a mighty impertinent thing and one for which I apologize, in his name, to my host. That’s all, Chief. The Argyle watch is still missing.”
The stupidly coined lie deceived no one but the police, though Doris Lane felt a throb of admiration for the man who thus sought to shield his friend. The lie helped to blot from her memory Clive’s earlier suspicion of Vail. She gave eager credit to the way wherein he defended the chum in whose guilt he really believed.
Old Miss Gregg reached out a wrinkled hand and patted Creede on the knee much as she might have patted the head of Macduff, the collie.
“You’re a good boy, Clive,” she whispered. “You always were. And, oh, it’s so infinitely better to do good than just to be good! If—”
Thaxton Vail’s fierce disclaimer drowned out her murmured words of praise.
“Chief,” declared Vail, “my friend is saying all this to protect me. But I don’t need any protection. That is the Argyle watch. Though how it happened to be in my pocket is more than I can guess. That’s the stolen watch. I ought to know. I’ve seen it a thousand times ever since I was a child. And I never broke a repeater-watch at Mr. Creede’s house. I never owned a repeater. And I never borrowed any watch from him. Also, to the best of my belief, his father never had a watch made to order. He always carried the Argyle watch, and I never heard of his having any other.”
“Chief,” interposed Clive, very quietly, as Vail paused for breath, “I have just told you the true story—the story I shall stick to, if necessary, on the witness stand. Please remember that. If I say that watch is not the stolen one any jury in the world will take my word as to my knowledge of my own property. And any accusation against Mr. Vail will appear very ridiculous. It will not add to your reputation. For your own sake I advise you to accept my statement at its face value.”
“Drop that idiocy, Clive!” exhorted Vail angrily. “I tell you I don’t need any protection. And if I did I wouldn’t take it in the form of a lie. You mean well. And I’m grateful to you. But—”
“That’s my story, Chief,” calmly repeated Creede.
Quimby was looking from one to the other of the two men in worried uncertainty. Both were rich and influential members of the Aura community. Both were lifelong dwellers in the region. The word of either, presumably, would carry heavy weight in court. Yet each flatly contradicted the other. The chief’s brain began to buzz. Holding up the watch and facing the onlookers he asked:
“Can any of you identify this watch?”
No one spoke. Vail glanced from face to face. Every visage was either unwontedly pale or else unwontedly red. But nobody spoke. Clive Creede’s eyes followed Vail’s to the countenances of the spectators. In his sunken gaze was a world of appeal.
“Miss Gregg!” cried Thaxton at random. “You knew Clive’s father for years. You’ve seen the Argyle watch ever so often. I call on you to identify it.”
“My dear Thax,” cooed the old lady, placidly, “nothing on earth would give me greater joy than to identify it—except to identify the scoundrel who stole it.”
“There!” exclaimed Vail, turning in grim triumph to the chief.
“But,” prattled on the serene old lady, “I’m sorry to say I can’t identify it. Because I don’t see it. I’m perfectly familiar with the Argyle watch. But the Argyle watch is most decidedly not the turnip-like timepiece our friend Quimby is dangling so seductively before me.”
Thaxton groaned aloud and sank into his chair, his mind awhirl. The chief smiled.
“That seems to settle it,” he said, briskly. “Mr. Vail, you must be mistaken. This cannot be the Argyle watch. Two more-than-reputable witnesses have just testified most definitely to that fact.”
“I don’t know what conspiracy you people are in to save me,” mumbled Vail, glowering from the haggard Clive to the smugly smiling old lady. “But you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t think I am guilty. And that hurts like raw vitriol. I—”
“Don’t be absurd!” chided Miss Gregg. “Don’t lose all the little intelligence the Lord saw fit to sprinkle into that fatuous brain of yours. I’ve known you all your life. I know all about you. You’d never receive a Nobel prize for anything except cleanness and squareness and sportsmanship and kindness. But you’re no thief. And every one knows it. So stop trying to be pathetic.”
“But—”
“Besides,” she continued, in the same reproving tone, “nobody but a kleptomaniac ever steals without a practical motive. What motive have you? Why—!”
“Motive?” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Motive, hey? Well, I can’t speak for you people’s losses, but Mrs. M.’s stolen joolry was worth $12,000, at a low appraisal. That seems to be motive enough for a poor dub of a country hotelkeeper to—”
“My good, if loud-mouthed, man,” replied Miss Gregg, “Mr. Vail’s annual income is something in the neighborhood of $200,000, to my certain knowledge. If he wanted such jewelry as was stolen to-night, he could have bought and paid for a three-ton truckload of it. He could even have paid present-day prices for enough gasoline to run the three-ton truck. What object would he have had in sneaking into our rooms and purloining little handfuls of gew-gaws? That is one argument which may appeal even to your mighty intellect. He—”
“But,” gurgled Joshua Q. “But—but hold on, ma’am! Is this a funny joke you’re springing? What would a man with a $200,000 income be doing, running a backwoods tavern like this? Tell me that. There’s a catch in this. Are the lot of you in the plot to—?”
“Miss Gregg is right, sir,” said the chief, who, like the rest of the community, stood in chronic fear of the eccentrically powerful old dame. “And there’s no need to use ugly words like ‘plot,’ when you’re speaking to a lady like her. Mr. Vail’s income is estimated at not less than $200,000, just as she’s told you. As for his running a tavern or a hotel, he doesn’t. This is his estate, inherited from the late Mr. Osmun Vail. I read in the paper, yesterday, that a clause of the will of Mr. Osmun Vail makes him keep a part of the house open, if necessary, as an inn. Whether or not that’s true, or just a newspaper yarn, I don’t know. But I do know that Mr. Vail could have no financial reason for stealing jewelry or small rolls of bills or cheap watches.”
He spoke with the pride of locality, in impressing an outlander with a neighbor’s importance. Thaxton Vail, thoroughly uncomfortable, had tried in vain, once or twice, to stem the tide of the chief’s eloquence and that of the old lady. Now he sat, silent, eyes down, face red.
Joshua Q. Mosely arose and came closer, staring at the embarrassed youth as if at some new-discovered specimen. His wife fluttered and wiggled, eyeing Vail as she might have eyed a stage hero.
“Well, I’m sure,” she said, mincingly, “that puts a new turn on everything. Quite a romantic—”
“Luella,” decreed her husband, breathing hard through his nose, “I guess we’ve made fools of ourselves, horning in here, to-day. Just the same,” he went on, scourged by memory of his loss, “that don’t clear up who stole our joolry. Nor yet it don’t give our joolry back to us. And those two things are more important just now than whether Mr. Vail is a multimillionaire or not.”
“Quite so,” agreed the chief. “We don’t seem to be getting much further in the case. Since Mr. Vail objects to being searched and objects to his guests being searched—well, I have no warrant to search them. But I take it there’s no objection to my searching the house, once more—especially the servants’ quarters and all that?”
“None at all,” said Vail. “Ring for Horoson. She’ll show you around.”
“I guess I and Mrs. M. will turn in,” said Mosely, “if we’re not needed any longer. We’re pretty tired, the both of us. Came all the way through from Manchester since sunrise, you know. And we’ve got to be off first thing in the morning. Chief, I’ll stop in at the police station on my way to-morrow and leave our address and post a reward. G’night, all.”
He and his wife departed to the upper regions, gabbling together in low, excited tones as they went. The housekeeper appeared, in answer to Vail’s ring. The chief and the constable strode off in her indignant wake to make their tour of inspection.
“I wish,” said Willis Chase, vindictively, “I wish those Mosely persons and that road-company police chief could be made to take turns occupying the magenta room. That’s the worst I can wish any one. I—”
“Clive, old chap!” exclaimed Vail, wheeling on Creede as soon as the policemen’s footsteps died away. “Why in blazes did you tell such a thundering lie? And, as for you, Miss Gregg—!”
“Young man,” interrupted the spinster, with great severity, “I knew you when you were in funny kilt skirts and when you wore your hair roached on top and in silly little ringlets at the back, and when you couldn’t spell ‘cat.’ If you think I’m going to tolerate a scolding from you or going to let you call me to account for anything at all you’re greatly mistaken.”
“But—”
“Besides,” she went on, relaxing, “suppose I did tell a lie? For heaven’s sake, what is a lie? That weasel of a Reuben Quimby had no more right to the contents of my brain than to the contents of my safe. A person who is not ashamed to lock a door with a key need not be ashamed to lock his mind with a lie.”
“Aunt Hester!” cried Doris, quite horrified.
“Not that I excuse foolish and unnecessary lies, my dear,” explained her aunt. “They are ill-bred, and they spoil one’s technique for the few really needful lies.”
Then, feeling she had averted for the moment Vail’s angry condemnation of her falsehood, she shifted the subject once more.
“Clive!” she ordained. “Go to bed. You look like the hero of a Russian problem novel. One of those ghastly faced introspectives with influenza names, who needn’t bother to spend money in getting their hair cut; because they are going to commit suicide in another chapter or so anyhow. You look positively dead. This has been too much for you. Go to bed, my dear boy. And thank you for restoring my faith in boykind a few minutes ago by lying so truthfully.”
Clive got to his feet, wavering, his face set in a mask of illness. He turned to Thaxton Vail and held out his hand. To Doris there seemed in the action an assurance of loyalty. To Vail the proffer savored of the dramatic—as if, believing his friend guilty, Creede was none the less willing to shake his hand.
“Clive,” said Vail, coldly, ignoring the gesture, “if you think I’m a thief I don’t want to shake hands with you. If you don’t think I’m a thief there’s no need in shaking hands in that melodrama fashion. Good night. Need any help to get upstairs?”
“No, thanks,” returned Creede, wincing at the rebuff. “I—”
He finished the sentence by toppling over in a dead faint at his host’s feet.
Instantly Vail and Chase were working over him, loosening his collar and belt, and lifting his arms on high so that the blood might flow back into the heart. Miss Gregg dived into the recesses of the black bead handbag she always carried on her wrist. From it she exhumed an ounce vial of smelling salts.
“Here!” she said. “Let me put this under his nostrils. It’s as strong as the Moral Law and almost as rank. The poor boy! He— Drat this cork! It’s jammed in. Got a corkscrew?”
Thaxton paused long enough in his work of resuscitation to take from his hip pocket the big German army knife which Clive had brought him from overseas.
“Here!” he said, opening the corkscrew and handing the knife to her.
“What a barbarous contraption!” commented Miss Gregg, as she strove to extract the cork from her smelling-bottle. “How do you happen to be carrying it in your dinner clothes?”
“I stuck it into my pocket, along with my cash, when I changed, I suppose,” said Vail, as he worked. “I was in a rush, and I—”
“That’s a murderous-looking thing on the back of it,” she went on, as she finished drawing the cork and laid the knife on the table. “It looks like the business-half of a medieval poniard.”
“That’s a punch, of some sort,” he answered absently. “Got the smelling salts ready yet?”
“He’s coming around!” announced Chase, as Miss Gregg knelt beside the unconscious man to apply the bottle to his pinched nostrils. “See, his eyes are opening.”
Clive Creede blinked, shivered, then stared foolishly about. At sight of the faces bending above him he frowned and essayed weakly to sit up.
“I—surely I wasn’t such a baby as to keel over, was—was I?” he panted, thickly.
“Don’t try to talk!” begged Doris. “You’re all right now. It’s been too much for you. Let Thax and Willis help you up to bed. Auntie, don’t you think we ought to telephone for Dr. Lawton?”
“No,” begged Clive, his voice somewhat less wobbly. “Please don’t. A good night’s rest will set me up. I’m ashamed to have—”
“Don’t waste breath in talking, old man!” put in Vail. “I’m a rotten host, to have let you have all this strain when you were sick. Don’t go struggling to get up. Lie still. So!”
Deftly he passed his arms under the prostrate man’s knees and shoulders. Then, with a bracing of his muscles, he lifted Clive from the floor.
“Go ahead, and open the door of his bedroom,” he bade Chase. “I’ll carry him up.”
“No!” protested Clive, struggling. “I—”
“Quiet, please,” said Vail. “It’ll be easy to carry you, but not if you squirm. Gangway!”